


The Haunter of the Cafeteria

by PartlyCloudySkies



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, maebea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 10:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10410282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PartlyCloudySkies/pseuds/PartlyCloudySkies
Summary: Bea should be at home, eating leftovers, doing paperwork. Instead, here she is, trying to find out what place Mae decided to break into this time.





	

The phone rang just as Bea was about to lock up the shop.

A little war raged in her head. _Go. Run. Leave this cursed place,_ said one side. _If that’s a customer scheduling another house call, you need to answer; you need the money,_ argued the other. They battled for a little while longer as Bea stared at the phone until necessity won out over personal feelings. She picked up.

“This is the Pickaxe, Beatrice speaki —”

“Yo!”

She let out a breath. “Mae?”

“Hellllll yeah.”

“Why are you calling?” Bea leaned against the counter.

“I’d do the thing where I’m like, ‘hey, can’t I call my dang friend,’ and you’re like, ‘that’s not what I meant,’ and we do a bit about it and all have a laugh, but I actually called to ask you a favor!”

“Okay.”

“So, like, my mom is _probably_ going to call you to ask about me and if she does you can just tell her I’m fine and I’ll be home soon. Cool?”

“What?”

“Dude, just tell her I’m fine and I’ll be home.”

Bea put her free hand to her temple. “Mae, where are you?”

“Come oooooon. Look, I know she’s gonna be mad I’m just trying to head her off at the pass, nothing to worry about.”

“Well now you’re worrying me. Where are you?”

Mae’s reply, what was sure to be another evasion, was lost when a deep, resonant ringing struck from her end of the phoneline. “Goddammit,” Bea could hear her say between bells.

A memory tickled at the back of her mind. Something familiar and forgotten that…

Bea raised an eyebrow. “Mae, are you at our old high school?”

“Dammit, dammit, dammit. You didn’t hear anything. That was me. It was my stomach. Growling. Shut up.”

“Why are you — Never mind. I’ll pick you up.”

“No! I can walk!”

“I swear if I go there and you’re vandalizing it or something…”

“I’m not!”

“Stay put I’ll be ten minutes.”

She returned the phone to its cradle, ignoring whatever protest Mae was in the middle of. Before she turned away from it, it was ringing again. She gave the phone an appraising look then picked it back up.

“Hello, Mrs. Borowski.”

“Oh! Beatrice.”

“I’m on my way to bring Mae home now. It might be a little while. She’s at the high school.” Bea checked for her car keys and flipped off the store lights.

“The — what on Earth is she doing there?” Bea could hear Candy Borowski’s voice waver somewhere between anger and anxiety.

“No idea. I’ll ask her when I get her.”

“Okay. Thank you so much, Bea. I realize this is an incredible imposition.”

“It’s no trouble.” She put the phone back in its place. She considered calling her father and letting him know, but it really was best to get on the road now. Besides, he wouldn’t likely notice her absence until she failed to prepare dinner, and tonight was leftovers night. He could fend for himself. She hadn’t balanced the cash register yet and there was that palette of mulch that she hadn’t gotten around to moving. She had told herself to do it after store hours but well…

And she was tired and sore and the end of the day always brought on a little headache but she fell into the driver’s seat of her car, turned the key and steered it in the direction opposite of the apartment building where her father had been molding the couch cushion to perfectly conform to the shape of his body since she was, like, 18.

Sometimes the responsibilities she had taken on felt like a great weight sitting on her back and driving away from them didn’t make the weight go away. She wasn’t outrunning them, that wasn’t something she could do. If anything, she had added yet another responsibility to her burden. “Make sure Mae Borowski hasn’t fallen off a cliff or whatever”. What the hell. There was probably some space left on her right scapula for that. Squeeze it between “make sure there’s money in the bank for the mortgage payment” and “keep track of every employee’s time worked so they don’t go over.”

Bea reached and turned on her radio. It played garbage but she could use some garbage. She felt her eyelids droop and it was probably only a matter of time before she ran some poor soul down while nodding off behind the wheel. Sucks to be that hypothetical future guy. Winter came and went and left behind a whole new slew of potholes that helped to jolt Bea into wakefulness.

Bea pulled into the parking lot of Possum Springs High. She twisted the key out, exhaled for a long moment, then climbed out of the car.

The school was locked up this time of night, yet there was no way Mae was anywhere else. The school clock tower had rung too many hours of Bea’s life away for her not to recognize it over the phone. She looked at the low, flat building with a touch of nostalgia. The clock tower was an extravagance mostly justified by the need for yet another goddamn Possum Springs statue dedicated to another monstrous coal baron. The tower rose up from the center of the high school, which pooled around it like a slag puddle leaking corridors and class rooms in random directions that had confounded a much younger Bea in her freshman year.

So. School locked. How did Mae get in there? Bea scanned for any sign of anyone anywhere. Dark windows looking into dark classrooms. A driving wind that passed over flapping banners in such a way that they whistled. Empty parking lot dotted with sodium yellow lamp posts. The main entrance to the school were two big metal double doors with security glass windows. A sheet of paper had been slipped between one of the double doors and fluttered in the wind.

Bea stubbed her cigarette out and walked, shoulders hunched against the wind and cold even as she appreciated how it woke her up a bit. She pulled the paper from the doors. Was this some kid’s homework? Yes it was. Chemistry. And it wasn’t even graded yet, which would be painful because it was clear this kid didn’t understand the concept of molar mass _at all_.

The harsh light of the parking lot lamps bore through the paper and highlighted writing on the back. Bea turned it over and there was Mae’s unmistakable messy scrawl all over the back of this poor kid’s work:

CAFETERIA and a blocky bird’s eye sketch of the school with a dotted line leading to a big X like this was a treasure map.

Oh hell no.

Bea debated internally about what to do with the homework and decided to slip it under the door and hope that whatever janitor picked it up in the morning might show the student some mercy and return it to whatever class room Mae had lifted it from. If you can’t have faith in janitors, who’s left?

There was a cafeteria entrance she could use if she followed the wall of the school for a while. As she passed by them she recalled how the nooks and odd corners of the school always made it seem like there was someone lurking in the shadows. Usually they were just the hangouts claimed by various cliques. The memories of all the weird petty high school nonsense lingered. God, who was the imbecile who claimed that these were the best years of anyone’s lives?

The cafeteria door had been propped open with half a cinderblock. Bea was tired and sore and this was trespassing, and knowing that the school couldn’t afford even a single security guard since her sophomore year didn’t make her any less reluctant to intrude on school grounds.

_No, you are an adult, not a kid violating curfew. Stop sneaking around and go where you like, okay?_

She slipped through the door. Once inside and out of the wind, the _click_ of her boots on linoleum floor tiles was audible. The corridor was unlit save for what light leaked in from outside and bounced off the floor and lockers that lined the walls. Immediately to her right was the wide entrance to the cafeteria and she could make out the sound of conversation, echoing in the vast space as she stepped inside.

“Whaddaya make of all this app stuff, Malloy? There’s big money there!”

“Don’t get me started Garbo, it’s app this, app that! Whatever happened to having a regular old phone?”

“Time’s a-changing Malloy! With an attitude like that we’d still be using horse-drawn carriages an’ eating raw meat!”

“We might as well be ‘cuz all this app talk is making me lose my app-ettite!”

“Now dat’s a whoppah!”

“Stay tuned folks! Coming up after these messages, Garbo sobs openly for five minutes without stopping!” 

And there was Mae. Sitting at one of the long cafeteria tables looking up at the television suspended from a ceiling-mounted rack. Four lunch-sized cartons of orange juice lay discarded in front of her as she sucked at a straw stuck through the top of a fifth one. She stared up intently at the monitor, blue-white light bleeding out the color of her eyes.

“Hey, Mae?”

Mae’s eyes widened and she broke into a coughing fit as she spluttered mid-sip of her orange juice. “Ah! Auuugh! Augh! God!”

“Mae, take it easy!” Bea walked up to her and, more out of habit or compulsion than anything else, righted an overturned juice carton so it no longer dripped a small puddle on the table.

“Holy crap dude! Whoa. Bea. Uh. Hey how’s it going? Pull up a seat. You come here often? Buy a lady a drink?”

“You know, I could actually believe you’re enough of a lightweight to get drunk off orange juice.”

“Could be. This _is_ pretty awful orange juice, like, it’s reasonable to assume a fermenting process may have taken place. Sit down with me we’re gonna straight chug this juice.”

“Definitely lowest bidder orange juice,” Bea said. “The only kind this school can afford. There’s concentrate then there’s this… distillation.”

“Like the factory squeezed all the orange juice into the vat and the truck has shipped it off to the rich schools but there’s still all these orange rinds lying on the floor so hell put it through the processor again and call it the Possum Springs special. Factory workers all joking about it,” said Mae.

“Pretty much. So stop drinking it and let’s get you home, Mae.”

“No! I gotta juice up!”

“Seriously Mae did you break into school just so you could drink orange juice?”

“As a taxpayer I probably paid for these!”

“You are not a taxpayer.”

“I aspire to be one.”

“Reach for the stars.”

Bea watched her. Mae was sucking at the straw with aggression, as if the orange juice had offended her.

“Mae, your mother is worried about you.”

“She’s been worried about me since I was like, born.”

Holding a conversation with Mae was an acquired skill. Especially when a topic she’d rather avoid was in play. Bea was tired and evasion was not something she was willing to put up with at the moment, but she knew from experience that if she let Mae change the subject she could get her to come around to the real issue eventually.

“How did you get in here anyway?” she said. “I know the security sucks but I’m pretty sure these doors get locked at the end of the day.”

“Years ago Casey showed me just the right way to jimmy the cafeteria doors open. It’s kinda complex but if you do it right you can just pop the lock without breaking anything.”

Bea slid to one side and sat next to Mae. She was surprised at how familiar it felt to sit at the table. Alarmingly familiar. “I’m impressed. I figured you were a ‘break the door down’ kind of person.”

“Casey always appreciated subtlety in a way I didn’t.”

“In that he appreciated it at all?”

“Heh. Yeah.”

They sat for a time without talking and the commercial break on the television filled the silence. Out of the corner of her eye, Bea watched as Mae frowned then muttered something inaudible during an unreasonably loud car commercial. She climbed on top of the cafeteria table and jumped with an outstretched arm, slapping the power button on the TV and killing the screen. The sound of her landing echoed in the sudden silence. Wordlessly, she returned to her seat.

 _Oh to hell with it_ , thought Bea. “Why are you here?”

Mae slumped. “Do I need a reason?”

“To come here? Yeah, I imagine there has to be a reason.”

“It’s stupid.”

“I want to know it.”

“You’ll say it’s stupid.”

“It’s stupid. There. I said it. Now tell me, goddammit.”

Mae’s mouth twitched into a smile. Her eyes drooped. “Ughhhhhhhhhhhh, Bea.”

“Ugh?”

“Ugh.”

Mae grabbed the half-empty juice carton and tipped it over, pouring juice on the table. “So. I had… like… this feeling that the school wasn’t here anymore.”

“Like a dream? Like the ones you had, uh, before?” Bea watched the juice pool on the battered surface of the table.

“No. I haven’t had those in a long while. And it wasn’t even a dream. Just like. A feeling. Or something.

“That what? The high school was demolished?”

“No. It was just gone! Like. It had floated away. Or it was gonna float away. That if I didn’t come here to look at it, it would all float away. Like the ground was gonna break apart and the whole school would just _whoosh_ like a kid that let go of their balloon or something and I had to come here to stop that from happening because otherwise it… would keep happening. Bits of Possum Springs floating away.”

“Oh.”

Mae flicked the now-empty carton towards a large plastic garbage bin up against the wall. The carton arced in the air and missed the bin by a wide margin. Bea smiled and Mae looked at her, daring her to comment.

“See? You think it’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. I know it, I know it. But… things were so weird there for a while and I just got this thought and I couldn’t shake it and…”

Bea shook her head. “What matters is the way you feel, Mae. You felt that way and it made you want to come here.”

“Isn’t that weird?”

“I mean, if I felt that this place would float away if I didn’t come check up on it, that would be incentive to make sure I’m on the far side of town when it does.”

“Hehe. Did you hate high school?”

“Not a lot of good memories I associate with this place.”

Mae’s expression fell. She wrung her hands together. “Oh. Shit. Duh, stupid me. Of course you don’t wanna be back here but here I am, dragging you back. Sorry.”

“Stop it Mae, it’s okay. You didn’t —”

As if the whole of the world was rushing towards her, Mae’s eyes widened, staring down the oncoming tsunami. “Holy shit it so isn’t. Like, you were at the Pickaxe all day and then I called and then you came here and it’s like you always have things you need to do back at your place and my mom totally called you didn’t she and now you’re here and you’re probably tired and now you’re dealing with me and —”

“Mae you have to chill. I promise you that if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, like that means anything! You’re _always_ doing things you don’t actually want to do! That’s the only reason you’re still in this town!”

An expression passed over Mae’s face, like she wanted to bite back the words already fading in the echoing cafeteria and she looked as if she were expecting anger from Bea and if Bea was totally honest with herself she expected the same. Instead she watched Mae, who was breathing rapidly and moving constantly and was staring with eyes that darted, and a certainty took hold of Bea. She grabbed Mae’s shoulder.

“Mae. I want you to breathe.”

“But —”

“Shut the hell up, close your eyes and breathe. Deep breaths.”

And she did. And she relaxed her arms. Bea felt the tension leave Mae’s shoulder. She opened her eyes after about a minute of this and they weren’t swimming in their sockets.

“Wow. What even was that?”

“I think you were having, like, an attack or something,” Bea said.

“You got on top of it quick.”

Bea shrugged. “I just did what the internet told me to do.”

“What did people even do before the internet?”

“I feel like a lot of history was people waiting around for something like the internet, even when they were too primitive to understand it. Like, the French Revolution could probably be understood as a kind of early discussion forum.”

“Hehe. Chopping off king heads is basically a really angry comment thread where the mods have a nervous breakdown.”

“Yeah.”

“Um. Sorry. About what I said. That was really shitty of me.”

“It’s okay.”

“But it isn’t,” Mae said. “Because I know I was getting carried away but that isn’t, like, a good excuse for saying crap like that. I don’t want me being a trainwreck to be an excuse.”

“This isn’t me abrogating your responsibility to apologize, Mae. This is me accepting your apology.”

“Oh. Okay. I think?”

“Where’s the payphone you called me from?”

“Like, over there.” Mae gestured to two phones mounted to the far wall.

“Alright.” Bea dug through one of her pockets for change. “I’m going to call your parents. Guess I should call my dad too. Let them know what’s up.”

“Aw, geez. Parents. Gonna be so pissed.”

“Mostly they’re worried but yeah pissed is probably on the table. How did you even have money to make a call? Since when did you carry money?”

“I like, went through the teacher’s lounge and found change.”

“You’re a monster.”

“Lurking in the school after hours, hell yeah!”

Bea kept her conversations brief. The Borowskis, as predicted, were worried and also angry but mostly relieved. Bea’s father communicated mostly in grunts of indifference but she got through it with a minimum of tension. When she hung up from the second call she turned to see Mae standing behind her, fidgeting.

“So… home again?”

Leaning back, Bea looked around her. Not enough time had passed for her to get that feeling where everything was smaller than she remembered, which was a disappointment. She would have appreciated some indication that she had left high school far behind, but little was forthcoming. And yet they were enveloped in a darkness and a stillness that Bea found comforting. She wondered if there was some fancy Latin-sounding word for people who like large, dark, empty buildings. Who liked the echoes and the sense of undisturbed space and solitude. It made her draw her arms tight around her chest and at the same time gave her a sense that the vastness was also wrapping itself around her. There had to be a name for it. She resolved to look it up one day. It never hurts to find a big fancy word to describe yourself with.

That was for later. Here and now, Bea felt… nice. The burdens that hung over her felt far off. As if she actually had outrun them.

“They know we’re here and we’re safe,” she said with a shrug. She leaned against the wall beside the payphones and looked down at Mae. “There’s no reason to leave right away. We can… talk.”

Mae looked at her for a long, unblinking moment. Then she stood straight, put her hands on her hips and endeavored to look sly. “Why. Beatrice Santello. Here we are, undeniably trespassing and you _don’t_ want to leave before someone catches us?”

“Hm. I suppose so. But unlike you, I _am_ a taxpayer so maybe I can be here if I want?”

Mae laughed.

They walked. Past rows of lockers, classrooms, bulletin boards and corridors that had been closed off with detour signs and scaffolding. In those sections, much of the ceiling was being torn down. It was the 21st century and they were only now getting around to stripping the asbestos out of the school.

Bea’s boots and Mae’s words echoed on the tile.

“So I heard about this really cool art museum that’s like, in a forest,” Mae said. “And that sounds like a cool place to go when we do our road trip. They have a river and some good paintings. Of flowers and fields and that kind of stuff.”

Bea looked at her. “Okay, yeah. That sounds like something we should add to the list. Wasn’t really expecting that from you.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like, don’t take this the wrong way, but I feel like you’d want to see museums about torture chambers or something.”

“I mean, I’m not going to say that’s not cool cuz it is, but if I want torture I can sit down on the steps of my house and look down the street.”

“Oof,” said Bea. “That’s harsh.”

“I didn’t mean it all harsh. It’s just… I feel like lately I’ve been finding, like, beauty in horror, right? And horror in beauty. And I guess I kind of just wanna see something that is what it is. A beautiful thing that actually is beautiful.”

“Mae Borowski, a pilgrim in search of sincerity.”

“It’s out there somewhere.”

“So is Possum Springs horrifying beauty or beautiful horror?”

“Heh heh.”

“What?”

“You sound like Lori,” Mae said.

“She’s actually kind of a cool kid,” said Bea. For all the turmoil in Mae’s life, she had still managed to forge new connections with people. Between Lori and Selma and… even the enigma that is Germ, Bea could almost imagine that her social circle was expanding just by being in proximity to Mae. It was a novel feeling.

They stopped in front of a sliding metal door. She wasn’t sure when it had happened exactly but at some point Bea had surrendered control of where they were going to Mae. Bea recognized the door instantly. It was the topic of many hushed conversations between students. She looked at Mae.

“Please don’t tell me you swiped the key for the elevator to the clock tower.”

“Naw,” said Mae. She reached into her pocket and brought out a flap of folded black leather, like a wallet but longer. She unfolded it and Bea saw several slender slivers of metal tucked into the leather.

Mae removed two of the metal probes. “Gregg left me a buncha stuff. The bass, other junk he didn’t want to take in his move, and these lockpicks. Said he wasn’t gonna do crimes no more now that he and Angus were living the lives of decent citizens in a place that isn’t awful.”

“Oh my god, Mae.”

“What? Don’t tell me you’re not the least bit curious. Nerd like yourself probably never been up there. And you _know_ what a complete joke security is in this school.”

“Yeah, yeah.” It was hardly worth fighting Mae on this when Bea knew she was right. But pride at least demanded a token effort. “Do you even know how to use those?”

“No. But I guarantee you this lock is so unbelievably crappy that I can probably jam a dime into the keyhole and it’d still turn.”

It took time and a little cursing, but Mae did get the lock to turn. There was a _ding_ and the elevator slid open. Bea couldn’t help the flutter of some nostalgic excitement. Only the school custodian had the key to the clock tower. There were no shortage of delinquents and vandals desperate to get up there out of pure adolescent rebellion. Even Bea had felt the pull despite being a valedictorian and model student, whatever Mae wanted to call it.

“Huh,” Bea said as they stepped into the elevator. Its walls were dingy with old water-stained wallpaper pocked with air bubbles, the floor was scuffed and there was a smell of mildew. A light fixture on the ceiling flickered. “Maybe my memory is bad but when I was a kid I swore that the few times I saw the inside of this elevator it practically glowed. Like the inside was golden.”

“Probably a grass is always greener situation,” Mae said.

“Probably.”

Mae pushed a button on a control panel that was all polished bronze in contrast to the crappy wallpaper that surrounded it. The door shut. There was that disorientation that always came with at the first motion of an elevator and for a moment Bea could imagine that they were actually descending to some secret chamber that nobody knew about and the door would slide open and reveal some new ancient awful secret of Possum Springs. But her senses readjusted and they were definitely going up.

“Whatsamatter?” Mae said.

“Oh. Nothing.”

The elevator opened to howling winds and a spiral staircase. The clock tower was capped with a large cupola that the stairs led up to. Two opposite sides of the cupola were dominated by clock faces, leaving the rest of the structure open to the elements. A statue stood in the center, dedicated to some bygone plutocrat she had never bothered to learn the name of. Above, unseen on top of the peaked roof Bea could hear a weather vane, spinning in the wind and squeaking as it did.

There wasn’t a whole lot of room, but the two manage to squeeze by the statue and they leaned against a brick balcony overlooking the school parking lot. They stood on gritty cement lightly carpeted with dead leaves left behind by the long departed autumn season. The same autumn where so much crazy stuff had gone down. Bea felt a sudden urge to gather up the leaves, as if they were mementos of that time. But that would be unbelievably gross. The night sky was high and clear, the wind having chased away all clouds. The moon hung bright above them blasting away the light of the stars around it.

“Crazy weather this time of year,” Bea said.

“It’s been a weird spring,” said Mae.

The banality of the conversation made Bea want to curdle up and die. She reached into her pocket and lit a cigarette instead.

“I always kind of imagined this is what the end of the world would look like,” Mae said. 

Her eyes were unreadable, squinting against the wind. Bea followed her gaze to look down at the parking lot. “Yeah?” she said.

“Yeah. Not like, meteors or mushroom clouds or zombies or whatever. Just… something like this. A parking lot that stretches alllll the way to the horizon. Wind that picks up litter in mini-twisters. lamp posts that stick out like tombstones and flicker in the dark. And nobody. Just nobody.”

“Kind of a shitty end.”

“We’re not cool like dinosaurs. We don’t get a cool end.”

Bea grunted and stared out into the parking lot. “I’ve been dreaming about the end of the world,” she said.

Mae’s ears perked up and she turned to look at Bea. “Oh. That sucks.”

“Yeah. I’ve actually been meaning to ask you about them.”

“Am I an expert on doomsday dreams?”

“You kind of are. I mean, isn’t that what you were dreaming about for like two straight weeks?”

Mae shrugged. “God. I guess. What did you wanna ask?”

Bea stubbed her cigarette out against the brick. Then an impulse caused her to stick it into a crack in the mortar. Maybe someone will come up here one day and see it and wonder who left it. “Like, did we kill Possum Springs? Like, were those guys really keeping this place alive by killing people?”

“I kind of feel like you’re asking if there really was something down there that could, like, do what they said it was doing,” said Mae.

“I suppose that’s another question worth asking. Is there a god underneath Possum Springs?”

“There’s _something_ down there. I know it’s hard to believe. I can tell you that it spoke to me.”

“I believe you, Mae.” It was something that Bea couldn’t really talk about with Angus much. She wanted there to be room in the universe for… something. It didn’t have to be a god but it would have to be good. If not for her, at least for the people who could no longer be on Earth with her. It would be nice. But that night in the mine had left some terrifying questions lingering in her mind.

“Okay,” said Mae. “But I don’t think it’s god. Or a god.”

“They said it answered their prayers when god didn’t.”

“Sure, but, like, if I pray for a donut, god isn’t going to give me a donut. But if I go to Donut Wolf, I can get a donut. Just because it can do something that they needed it to do doesn’t mean that it’s a god.”

Bea chuckled softly and let out a long breath. “Well. That’s good. If there is someone at the controls, would rather not want something like that to be it.”

“Yeah. But… back to your first question, uh… do you remember what that guy said about how far back they first learned about it?”

“Like, 20 years?”

“Yeah. So they were doing all that stuff while you and I were around and, like, did Possum Springs look particularly alive to you? I mean, they said that they were making the place better but looking back it seems to me it was still falling apart. I feel like even if they were keeping the town intact, maybe it wasn’t the best for the town? It’s like… the leopard scientists.”

“Uh. What?”

“You know, who study butterflies.”

Mentally, Bea made a few leaps. Sometimes holding a conversation with Mae felt like juggling bowling pins and someone off to the side tosses you a chainsaw. But she was getting better at keeping her footing whenever Mae lurched into a seeming non-sequiter. “Lepidopterists.” 

Mae raised an eyebrow. “Really the way you like, remember words kind of floors me.”

“What about them?”

“Like, if you pin a butterfly down and put it in a display case then… it’s there. It’s there all the time. You can look at it. You can say ‘oh, that butterfly has pretty wings’ and you can look at the wings and it never flaps the wings or flies away because it’s dead. So you can look at the wings all you want. Because it’s dead. And maybe it’s kind of dusty and the colors are faded, but you can see it. But if like, that same butterfly is out in the wild, you can’t get a good look at it because it’s moving around and fluttering and being alive. But the colors are brighter and it can, like, feed on nectar and be alive and dance at the edge of your vision so you can’t like study it but you know it’s out there. So it’s either alive and fleeting or dead and still. And like… maybe that’s what they were doing to Possum Springs. Pinning it down and making it dead.”

“Now it’s going to fly away?”

“I dunno. I want to do something to make sure it thrives, though I clearly don’t even know where to start. But if it does die… I mean, it’s cruel to say that if a town is gonna die than you should just let it die. It’s cruel because people can love a place, but I know it’s something that could definitely happen. Even if I don’t want it to. But… I think if that’s what’s in store then maybe we have to let it. I don’t want to pin anything down.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” Bea said. “Making sure the school doesn’t float away?”

Silence. Bea watched Mae from the corner of her eye. Mae slumped and put her forehead on the brick.

“Geez,” she said.

“Mae —”

“Geeeeeeeeez. I really am dumb, aren’t I?”

Bea sidled closer to Mae and put a hand on her shoulder. “You really aren’t, Mae. It was just a stupid joke. You’re… you’ve actually been really smart. To talk to.”

Mae looked up so one side of her head was still resting on the bricks. “Really?”

Bea leaned on both elbows and looked off into the distance. She closed her eyes and felt the bracing wind. “Yeah. I’m enjoying this.”

“Is fun and smart Mae back?” said Mae.

“Eh. Well. I don’t know if I’d go that far.” Bea cracked a smile.

“Aw dang.”

They stood in silence. The night sky was telling Bea she was up quite a bit later than she liked to be, but she didn’t feel tired at all. The wind was cold but good and that feeling of an empty space embracing her seemed to only get bigger when they had gotten up here.

“I like this too,” said Mae. “So, uh, I have a question?”

“Mm?”

“I’m pretty sure that not too long ago, if you and I were doing this, you’d be like, headlocking me and dragging me to your car by now. But instead we’re up here, very off-limits.” Mae’s eyes reflected the light from a lamp post as she looked up at Bea. “When did this start being cool with you?”

“It kind of isn’t. But I guess I’m just in a mood tonight. Well. No. That’s not entirely true. I guess… I’ve…” Bea sighed.

“Is it… bad?”

“No. Maybe a little embarrassing.”

“Oh.”

Bea recognized the disappointment in that voice. _What the hell_ , she thought. “So, remember the party?”

“The one where I puked on Cole?”

“Wasn’t that prom?”

“No, it was up in the park too.”

“You didn’t really puke on him then.”

“I’m pretty sure I got his shoes,” Mae said as if defending her pride.

“Okay yeah I suppose, but not that party. Jackie’s. When I, uh, ran away?”

“After I acted like a complete dick and embarrassed you?” 

“Yeah.”

Mae winced. “I think at this point parties should have a little picture of me so people know to avoid me if I show up. Like, I still kind of can’t believe you talk to me after that.”

“It’s seriously okay, Mae.” Bea looked down and saw skepticism. “I mean, yeah it sucked. But I guess it kind of crystallized a few salient facts about my life."

“Like what?”

“Like despite whatever else, the number of people who’d be willing to run over rain-slicked rooftops and gutters to find me is a number that I could count on one hand after it had been mangled in an industrial accident. And I’m grateful that you’re one of them.”

Mae’s eyes widened and she stood up straighter. She looked at Bea and seemed to have difficulty getting a sentence out. “Oh… wow. Thanks,” she managed. “And. You know. The number of people who’d follow me into an abandoned mine filled with murder cultists I could count on a similarly maimed hand.”

“We thought there was only one guy and he was badly wounded.”

Mae rolled her eyes. “Let’s just both overlook details such as you not knowing otherwise and me being responsible for you running off in the first place, okay?”

“Right, okay. Anyway. Like. That party. I almost didn’t go.”

“Would that… have been a good thing?”

Bea shrugged. “Not really. I was, like, nervous and kind of scared.”

“Oh. Wow. What changed your mind?”

“You did.”

“Whuh?”

“Spending time with you, it just kind of got me thinking about the way you approach life.”

“Badly?”

Lifting her hand and curling it into a fist, Bea brought it down softly on top of Mae’s head. “Shush. Like, I feel like we’re all kind of just repeating ourselves. Like, um, we’re moving in circles. But _you_ pretty much move in a straight line. Like a steamroller crushing everything in its path. And yeah, that can get you into trouble but even so I kind of admire that? Like sometimes I wish I could do what you do. Break shit and go places and not really care what other people might think. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I kind of care about that.”

“Well, you’re always going on about how the cops might catch us and somebody might see us or —”

“Yeah.”

“Kind of figured that was because I was wrecking things.”

“There is that. But thinking about you, it kind of made me want to break off a piece of that courage you have and use it for myself? Like, if you can wreck shit then I can go to a party. The fact that you were willing to come with helped.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“It’s weird to hear someone use me like a kind of role model? Like, weird and a little terrifying? Most people, if they talk about me, like, hold me up as an example of what not to be.”

“Most people don’t take the time to know most other people.”

“Thanks. You know I basically look up to you, right? I mean it’s weird and terrifying but also really actually awesome that you can look at me and, like, see something that makes you want to do things. And that goes both ways. Because I think about how you’re like, really strong and dealing with all the shit life put in your way. And it makes me want to be stronger too. Like. Strong enough to get out of my bed, get out of my head, get out of this… place I find myself in so often and… and… maybe it doesn’t always work but… it’s a thing that happens.”

“Mm. That’s… good. Mae. I’m glad.” Bea fell silent and Mae seemed satisfied at the response and they both resumed staring off into the distance. Unspoken words bubble up within Bea. She was more than glad. It would be an understatement to say that Mae was averse to change and Bea had accepted this. The doubt still gnawed at her that she could fill in the gap when Gregg and Angus left for Bright Harbor. And for a while Mae seemed to withdraw. They had gotten through it. Together. And with help. They’d never have what Mae had with Gregg, but this was nice too.

Bea scanned the school grounds below. An irregular shadow caught her eye and focused her attention. She stood still for a long, breathless moment.

“Hm.”

“What’s up? Hey? Bea?”

She hardly even felt anything. Which probably wasn’t a shock when viewed objectively, but still. It was worth noting.

“Beeeeeeea.”

“I was sitting right there.” Bea pointed with a finger and Mae followed with her eyes until she saw a tree that stood separate from the tree line that defined the borders of the school. “Me and my high school friends would sit there during lunch. That’s where I was when I found out my mom died.”

Mae stood at alert, eyes transfixed. “Oh. Wow. Really?”

“Well. That’s where I was sitting when the principal got on the PA system and told me to come to his office. But there was only one reason why he would do that. So yeah. That’s when I knew.” Bea swallowed and cleared her throat. “She made me go to school. Otherwise I would have stayed at the hospital.”

“Oh.” Mae seemed to shrink where she was standing. Bea knew she was silently berating herself.

“Stop it,” she said. “It’s weird. I can remember how hurt I felt right then, but I can’t actually feel the hurt itself. Not as intensely, anyway.”

“Angus says that time has a way of making scary things less scary,” Mae said softly.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m betraying her. Like, I should feel as terrible now as I did at that moment, because if I don’t feel terrible then it’s like it doesn’t matter.”

“But it _does_ hurt,” Mae said. “And it _does_ matter. And it’s gonna keep mattering, because you’re not gonna let yourself forget. I mean, it’s okay not to remember how bad you felt because… like… memory and emotion are probably different things? Yeah, that sounds like a thing. But you remember that you felt it… and there’s nothing else out there except how we feel! There’s no god with, like, a scoreboard keeping track of how messed up you are at any given moment. It’s just… us… and…”

Her voice trailed away and the wind filled the silence. Bea’s eye flicked towards her. “I’m glad you’re here, Mae.”

“Me too.”

Before she could say anything more, the clock struck the hour. And it was _loud_. They flinched at the sound of each ring. “But I think we should leave!” Bea said.

“Me _definitely_ too! Home again?”

“Home again.” She nodded and pulled Mae towards the stairs.

They walked down the stairwell, back to the elevator and its awful wallpaper and dim light and gross smell. The ringing became more tolerable. As Bea crossed the threshold into the tiny compartment, a flash of light caught her eye. A reflection of moonlight cast in an oily metal copper gleam that cut through the feeble light of the lone bulb above.

“What’s this?” Bea said. The reflection had come from under a bit of wallpaper that had peeled away from the side of the elevator. When she poked at the peeling surface, Bea saw a flat plane of gleaming bronze light. Mae, never to be left behind when it came to property damage, took notice and immediately shredded the wallpaper in front of her. It fell away, its poor adhesive no match against her. They both stared at the wall of gleaming bronze that had been hidden underneath.

“Oh wow, this is fancy as shit,” said Mae.

“Makes sense,” said Bea. “I mean, this entire tower was, like, dedicated to some rich asshole. I’m sure he would’ve wanted a swanky elevator. Mae wait —”

But Mae was fully occupied. In a flurry of energy, even as the elevator doors slid shut, she was tearing away the wallpaper, leaving crumpled sheets of it to pile up around their feet. Soon most of it was gone and they were standing surrounded by a rich bronze luster. On the wall opposite of the door, Mae indicated the presence of a plaque, bronze set into bronze.

“I can’t read it,” Bea said.

“’The Hezekiah Silas Montague Memorial Tower, Dedicated 1965,’” Mae read. “’Education is the beacon which calls us to port from the storms of ignorance.’ That’s Hallmark as hell.” She began feeling along the newly exposed walls.

“Mae, what are you doing?”

“There’s probably more secrets!” It didn’t take her long to complete her search. There wasn’t much wall to begin with. “Gross. I smell like glue now. And there’s nothing except this button.” She had come to the control panel, where there was a single button that controlled either the ascent or descent of the elevator and an extra button, metal, tarnished, and unmarked. She pressed it.

“Mae, no that’s probably the emergency button —”

The elevator _blazed_.

The light fixture in the ceiling had a single working bulb, but what Bea hadn’t noted before was that it was of multiple bulbs, the rest burnt out. It hardly seemed worth noting. Most things in Possum Springs seemed to only half-work. Now though, emergency flood lights fixed to the corners of the elevator switched on and the combined light illuminated the polished brass walls even through the tarnish of badly applied glue. The light forced Mae and Bea to shield their eyes as it was all so bright.

“Wow,” Mae said with a breath. “Whaddaya know.”

Bea blinked away the glare and was now wide-eyed. “The inside _is_ golden.”

It looked just as she remembered from the quick glimpses when she was much younger. Once upon a time, back before lights started going out, this was what the elevator looked like. A golden, blazing elevator. She pressed the ball of one hand up against her forehead and laughed. For the sake of things remembered, the way they were before, she laughed. And Mae joined her.

When the elevator door opened at the ground floor, it opened to Mae and Bea, leaning against one another. They stood there choking with laughter and they might have stayed there for a little while longer, except now, when the elevator door was open, was when the alarm attached to the emergency button chose to go off.

Bea stopped as the ringing alarm cut her off. “Oh shit!”

“Ha ha ha! Okay we should definitely run now!” Mae shouted over the noise. She grabbed Bea by the hand and pulled her out of the elevator.

Bea trailing behind her, Mae barreled down the corridor and shoulder checked the main exit. Bea’s car, still the only one in the parking lot, sat motionless under the glow of a lamp post.

They tumbled into the car, Bea turned the key, they pulled out of the parking lot. They passed the tree line. They crested the hill. Possum Springs sprawled below them, nestled between valleys. Horrifying, beautiful, a thing lurking in a corner, a comforting vastness, a butterfly unpinned.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
